April 11, 2019
Mr. Jerry Adams, Chair
Eastern Zone Technical Planning Committee
Re: Proposed 2019 EZ LC Age Group Championship Qualifying Times
Mr. Adams,
Using a database of 23 million USA-S age group swims, I found that the proposed qualifying times for the 2019 Eastern Zone LC Age Group Championship give significantly more opportunity to boys at the expense of girls, and to younger athletes at the expense of older ones.
Overall, boys are expected to qualify for 1.4 times as many events as girls under the proposed qualifying times. The least fair events are the 11-12 50 Back and the 15-18 50 Free, where boys have more than 1.9 times the opportunity to qualify as girls.
15/Overs are expected to qualify for 9.4 times as many events as 10/Unders. Athletes aged 9 or 11 have half the chance of qualifying (4%) than an age 14 athlete has to qualify for the 2019 Futures (8%).
My analysis of the proposed cuts is attached and available online at: http://www.swimtheory.com/home/003-qualifying-times/meets/ez2019l
Using the same database, I compared the four zone LC age group championships in 2018. The comparison shows that it is twice as hard for a 14/under to qualify for age group championships in the eastern zone (0.24) than the western (0.39) or central (0.41) zones, largely because the Eastern Zone makes it so easy for 15/overs to qualify (1.10). The analysis also shows that the Central Zone, which uses "AAA" motivational times, is the most gender-fair zone age group championship. My analysis of the zone championships is also attached and available online at http://www.swimtheory.com/home/003-qualifying-times/003-007-zone-championships-are-unfair
Based on these two analyses, I recommend that the Eastern Zone LC age group championship (a) limit age group championships to 14/Unders and (b) use USA Swimming’s "AAA" motivational times for all of its qualifying times because they are vastly fairer with respect to both age and gender than the proposed times.
Sincerely,
@SwimTheorist
CC: Eastern Zone Technical Planning Committee Members